{"id":100003,"date":"2018-04-23T16:49:45","date_gmt":"2018-04-23T22:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/community-college-gives-students-a-second-chance\/"},"modified":"2018-04-23T16:49:45","modified_gmt":"2018-04-23T22:49:45","slug":"community-college-gives-students-a-second-chance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/community-college-gives-students-a-second-chance\/","title":{"rendered":"Community college gives students a second chance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Lauren
Lauren Richardson, Jonie Ditzler, Rob Abercrombie and Rachael Sproul check vitals on a mock patient during a nursing class at Southwest Community College in Mancos in Fenruary.<\/span>Emily Rice\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Pueblo Community College is giving students an opportunity to return to school to finish their degrees.<\/p>\n

The initiative provides scholarships for students who had to leave PCC shortly before graduating but want to re-enroll.<\/p>\n

The Return to Earn Program began in 2016 after PCC received a grant from the Quarterly Forum<\/a> organization. That grant was matched by the Colorado Opportunity Scholarship Initiative<\/a> through the Colorado Department of Higher Education<\/a>, according to a news release. The foundation used the grant to solicit more donations for the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese students are on a fast track to finish their degrees and move immediately into our workforce,\u201d PCC Foundation President Paul Willumstad said.<\/p>\n

According to the release, 194 students have re-enrolled, and 113 will be PCC graduates at the end of this semester. The average age of a Return to Earn student is 33, the news release said.<\/p>\n

For students with a grade of C or higher and have not been sent to collections, their debt is erased. One-on-one assistance is provided.<\/p>\n

Program director Richie Ince told The Journal in an email that students can get started with Return to Earn by calling his office at 719-549-3202. There are no deadlines, and staff will work with students until the start of the fall semester.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese scholarships are first-come, first-serve, so time is of the essence as there are only a limited number of scholarships,\u201d Ince wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Program helps students finish their degree<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,402,414,1163,84],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-100003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-drought","tag-weather","tag-weather-science","tag-wildfire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100003"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=100003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}